• A PC or Mac with latest updates
• Headset (w/mic)
• Webcam (optional for video)
• OCS Application - Windows
• OCS Application - Mac (setup)
• OCS Configuration - Windows (Setup the client by downloading and running the .reg file (unzip the .zip file))
• OCS Web Access - Mac, Windows
• OCS Mobile - Blackberry
• OCS Mobile - Windows Mobile
• OCS Mobile - iPhone (coming soon)

• Manual configuration of OCS: http://exchange.managedcompany.com/support/kb/default.asp?id=1375
• How do I store my Office Communicator (OCS) chat history? http://exchange.managedcompany.com/support/kb/default.asp?id=1406
• Mac Office Communicator (OCS) install http://exchange.managedcompany.com/support/kb/viewKBArticle.asp?id=1458
• How can I use OCS on my windows mobile device? http://exchange.managedcompany.com/support/kb/viewKBArticle.asp?id=1413
• What is my User Name and Primary Email Address for my Exchange 2007 mailbox? http://exchange.managedcompany.com/support/kb/viewKBArticle.asp?id=1637  
  

For more videos, tips and updates follow us via twitter @managed @emailhost

As you may have heard via news reports, there is a new Internet Explorer exploit that has been reported.  This exploit downloads malware via the video ‘Active X’ control in Internet Explorer.  Microsoft does not have a patch for this exploit at this time, but has a temporary workaround that we recommend you download immediately. 

Please note that this is a proactive security tip for the Managed Company Hosted Solutions Community. Non-MC clients, should your company or organization need outsourced email servers or hosted online business solutions  please contact us today - I'm sure we can be of assistance.

Vulnerability in Microsoft Video ActiveX Control

Earlier today, Trend Micro also informed us that about 967 Chinese websites are reported to be infected by a malicious script that leads users to successive redirections and lands them to download a JPG file containing the exploit. Trend Micro detects it as JS_DLOADER.BD.  Upon successful exploitation, the script downloads another malware detected as WORM_KILLAV.AI. This malware disables and terminates AV processes, and drops other malware on the affected system.  Unfortunately, the Microsoft workaround will likely disable your ability to view video via Internet Explorer. 

To download the workaround, please click on the following link, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972890, and follow the steps after ‘enable workaround’ that Microsoft recommends:



For more information on this vulnerability, the Microsoft Knowledge base article can be found at, http://bit.ly/mc-microsoft-ie.

Monthly retained customers will be kept you updated on this vulnerability stand by and be prepared to take action as soon as a patch has been released by Microsoft.

Resources Microsoft's free online saftey scan http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm Microsoft “Critical” security advisory http://bit.ly/mc-microsoft-ie  Workaround http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972890 Trend Micro: http://bit.ly/mc-trendmicro-ie  Managed Company Support Portal http://www.managedcompany.com/support/kb

Kind regards,
Managed Company at Anobleworld
   

Source: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
Are you the owner of a .yu domain? Then you might have heard the news: as of September 30, all .yu domains will stop working, regardless of their renewal date. This means that any content you're hosting on a .yu domain will no longer be online. For those of you who would still like to have your site online, we've prepared some recommendations to make sure that Google keeps crawling, indexing, and serving your content appropriately.

• Check your backlinks. Since it won't be possible to set up a redirection from the old .yu domain to your new one, all links pointing to .yu domains will lead to dead ends. This means that it will be increasingly difficult for search engines to retrieve your new content. To find out who is linking to you, sign up with Google Webmaster Tools and check the links to your site (you can also download this list as a "comma separated value" -- .csv -- file for ease of use). Then read through the list for sites that you recognize as important and contact their webmasters to make sure that they update their links to your new website.
•  Check your internal links. If you are planning to simply move your content in bulk from the old to the new site, make sure that the new internal navigation is up to date. For example, if you are renaming pages on your site from "www.example.yu/home.htm" to "www.example.com/home.htm" make sure that your internal navigation reflects such changes to prevent broken links.
•  Start moving the site to your new domain. It's a good idea to start moving while you can still maintain control of your old domain, so don't wait! As mentioned in our best practices when moving your site, we recommend starting by moving a single directory or subdomain, and testing the results before completing the move. Remember that you will not be able to keep a 301 redirection on your old domain after September 30, so start your test early.

While you're moving your site, you can test how Google crawls and indexes your new site at its new location by submitting a Sitemap via Google Webmaster Tools. Although we may not crawl or index all the pages listed in each Sitemap, we recommend that you submit one because doing so helps Google understand your site better. You can read more on this topic in our answers to the most frequently asked questions on Sitemaps. And remember that for any question or concerns we're waiting for you in the Google Webmaster Help Forum!

Written by Luisella Mazza, Search Quality Senior Analyst

• Viruses and malware – Attackers who use email as a conduit toinvade corporate networks for the purposes of either stealing information, or taking control of computers for other illegal activities.
• Phishing – Attackers who lure users into submitting personal or business information by convincing them they are interacting with a legitimate vendor or business partner, when they are in fact communicating with the attackers.
• Malicious employees & employee negligence – Employees or ex-employees who inadvertently compromise sensitive business information, or worse, purposely try to access and/or steal privileged information.
• Corporate Espionage – Attempts by competitors to gain an unfair advantage by accessing internal company information including product designs, launch plans or financial data.
• Hackers – Internet pirates looking for valuable information that they can either use to illegally profit or sell on the “black” market.

1. Physical Security
2. Logical Server Security
3. Network Security
4. Client Security
5. Antivirus and Antispam
6. Administration and Policy Security
7. Backup and Recovery
   

In-House vs. Manage Company's Hosted Email Services are you covered

 

Fully customizable CRM solution extends company's collaboration portfolio

Alexandria, VA (January 20, 2009) - Managed Company, an emerging software as a service (SaaS) provider specializing in  messaging, eBusiness and collaboration solutions, has announced that it is now offering Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 as a hosted service. This offering extends Managed Company's reach within the productivity and collaboration space, offering an easily deployable and customizable customer relationship management (CRM) solution to its existing hosted Exchange email and collaboration, SharePoint collaboration platform and Office Communications Server instant messaging and presence services.

Unlike other one-size-fits-all hosted CRM offerings, Managed Company's hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 integrates with our Online Business Platform, an integrated system that runs your website, email marketing and online shop. Customized with Dynamics CRM now you can grow your customer database linking your online business with your in-house operations.  This level of customization is possible because each CRM customer is guaranteed its own virtual dedicated server. Other vendors rely on shared server infrastructure and a basic control panel which limit their ability to meet every customer's specific needs. With Managed Company's new offering, customers gain a clear competitive edge because they are able to narrow sales leads, tactics, and sales and marketing campaigns to their unique core competencies and market demands. Managed Company's channel partners gain an enhanced revenue stream from the opportunity to fine-tune and tailor the CRM solution to the needs of each customer.

"Managed Company's hosted Dynamics CRM 4.0 enables us to add a high-margin recurring revenue stream offering into our product mix that tightly integrates into our existing hosted Exchange offerings," said Joseph Kowalenko, President of a mid-sized Chicago-based managed services provider, and a Managed Company channel partner. "The flexibility of their service enables us to customize solutions for our customers, making us much more relevant to them than standard off-the-shelf software."

"CRM has become a business critical application because optimizing and tracking the sales process has become more and more important to increasing sales and growing customer relationships," said Noble Ackerson Managed Company's CEO. "I am passionate about changing the way businesses think about technology. Smaller to mid sized companies should not have to sacrifice productivity because of the cost of hosting and maintaining their own hardware and software. That is why we provide a solution that will help our customers meet their online business and on in house business needs."

In addition to customization benefits, Managed Company's Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is tightly integrated with our eBusiness Management software and our hosted Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, allowing a minimal learning curve and quick return on investment. It can be fully synchronized with email, tasks, contacts and calendars. Users can also seamlessly export data into Excel for fast analysis and reporting.

Businesses around the globe looking for a trusted provider of SaaS, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, Microsoft Exchange 2007, SharePoint, Office Communications Server 2007 and Online Business Management tools, visit Managed Company's Exchange Hosting Web site at www.exchangeasaservice.com

Working through the holidays is hard work. Today we put the final touches on our new revamped email marketing reporting framework  which we will be adding to our eBiz platform. To give some background, email marketing has been a part of our plaform for a few months now and the reporting is definitely due for a face lift. But in that time we've launched our Goals Framework which acts like a brain for all eBiz customers. The new reporting framework will provide customers with information previously near impossible or too time consuming to collect.

Email marketing is a commodity and you can expect reports such as: open rates, bounces, popular links, subscriptions and unsubscriptions from almost any provider. Now imagine without having to add a single line of code to your eBiz website, you get stats like:

Of those who opened the email:

• 10% bought product x, 22% bought product y
• 23% filled in your "December Sales Enquiry Form"
• 5% subscribed to your other monthly newsletter
• 22% made a comment on your blog
• Average sale price via the online shop was $344
• and the list goes on..

I'm pretty excited about this improvement and what it'll mean for our customers and partners. I know it'll turn the email marketing game upside down!

You don't need another reminder that we're working through a period of slow economic growth and a jittery business climate. But amongst all the doom and gloom, this stormy cloud comes with a silver lining for people working in Online Marketing and Web Design which are traditionally B2B consulting services.

Despite this fact, it's no secret that you're finding it harder to close deals. But lets go back to basics: your pitching needs to begin with education, and education begins with asking the right questions. Here's some questions you should be asking your prospects to clinch your deals:

1. What's In Your Marketing Inventory - Is it working for you?

One simple activity I like to do is pull out a spreadsheet and line up all my advertising spending and how many leads each one is generating for me. 'Leads' can range from anything to phone calls, inquiry forms, direct emails, site registration for forum participation, leaving comments - whoops, there's one problem - I don't actually know how many customers I'm getting from all my offline advertising...

Most importantly, it's hard to measure how much business they generate for you. This is not to say they're valueless - but contrast this with an fully fledged online business. With concrete and clear metrics, you know the exact ROI of your online marketing campaigns. Best of all, you can optimize and redeploy online campaigns in a few hours - dollar for dollar, online is where the smart money is.

2. People are staying home, and staying online more - what are you doing about it?

Tight belts and high gas prices mean people are spending a lot more time at home in front of the TV and the computer. Where are they hanging out online? Have a think about this - you need to be advertising in their space, participating in their blogs and becoming an authority in their forums.

For example, let's  imagine you sell model train kits. You could be sponsoring some train modelling blogs and forums in return for some inexpensive and targeted advertising. These banners can link back to pages on your website which could be designed to educate, sell and encourage online community participation. All of which is 100% measurable, so if it's not effective - just cut the spending.

3. What's your Freemium Strategy?

People love free stuff and they love it even more when they haven't got much to spend. I'm not asking you to give away your products for free but what about online 'cash' coupons or discounts that they have to register on your website to receive? And once they've registered you'll be able to market to these customers in a monthly e-newsletter. We all have to move stock and attract new customers - so think about some clever online marketing strategies to do it...

4. Have you Cleaned your House yet?

Back to basics once more - now's the time to be pushing business branding and website makeovers. Is the website from 2003 looking a bit tired? Does it match up with your bricks and mortar branding? Does your customer service live up to your promises? Is your content up to date? Are your landing pages and catalogs well laid out and easy to use? Lets spring clean your whole online business 'house' and entice those customers back.

5. You are the Online Business Hero.

Working in a B2B industry, you're going to get worried business owners looking for advice and solutions to their problems. You can gain their trust by giving your expert advice for free. And to your clients?

Well you can tell them that anybody can make a dime when times are good. But true to the old saying, when times get tough...the tough get going.

So ask them: What are you doing to toughen up your (online) business?

I was thinking today about the uphill battle that many small business owners face. They're fighting for business against larger, better funded competitors. How can you win?

In war, you can amass the biggest army and throw your soldiers at the enemy. The bigger the enemy is, the more soldiers you'll need - but hey, it works. Mostly.

In business, if you want to solve a problem, you can throw money at it. The bigger the problem, the more money you'll need to throw - but hey, it works. Mostly.

Big companies tend to throw money at problems, just like big guys are more likely to muscle their way through conflict. Little guys prefer to talk their way out of conflicts, like little companies attack their competitors with smart and efficient marketing.

When I say "marketing" I'm not talking about advertising and spending money on billboards. I'm talking about having a conversation with your customers; about making deals with like minded companies; about letting your customers spread the word for you; about making your product that much better than anyone elses; about making your service shine and delight.

History shows us that the biggest armies can fall to superior strategy and tactics; think Henry V and the battle of Agincourt. History also shows us that diplomacy and negotiation can achieve better outcomes than any war, and hence the saying that "the pen is mightier than the sword."

Well, I say Marketing is mightier than Money.

Right now, times are tough. And I've heard many business owners wish that they had more funding, or the resources of their larger competitors, so that they could weather the storm more comfortably.

That's fair. But the true winners out of this are going to be the smart, little companies who figure out that this a storm that they can talk themselves out of.

In this climate, smart marketing is a thousand times better than deep pockets.

We've added 2 new credit card options to our web forms feature that'll help you streamline and automate your online business. Currently we have one credit card option that simply allows you to collect and process payments in real-time, e.g. collect donations. The 2 new options allow you to:

• Process existing invoices - If you are using the Order/Invoicing framework in this system, then you can manually or automatically send invoices to your customers and have them visit a specific page on your website, enter the relevant invoice number and pay for it in real-time using their credit card.
• Update credit card details - This feature is particularly useful if you are using our recurring billing engine. You can now put the 'Update Credit Card Details' form on any web page and have your customers visit this web page as and when they need to update their credit card details.

To learn more please go to: Modules->Web Forms.

It's been in the works for some time but our first release of QuickBooks integration is now live and running. This new feature allows you to push all your online sales and related customer information directly into QuickBooks as required. To learn more please refer to the QuickBooks article in the Wiki.

To get started go to: eCommerce->QuickBooks.